Objective: To evaluate the familiarity of
front-line clinicians with findings from the
Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention
Effectiveness (CATIE), the influence of didactic
continuing medical education on provider knowledge
about key details of CATIE, and how
location-related factors affect rates of pre-event knowledge
and intraevent learning about CATIE.

Method: Data derived from the
Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Academy
(MGH-PA) semester II live symposia provided in
different cities nationally between September and
December 2006 were analyzed to evaluate providers' self-assessment of their knowledge about
CATIE. In addition, participants were also asked a preactivity and postactivity question to
assess learning of material presented during the
live event psychosis lecture. Descriptive
statistics were utilized to characterize participants'
self-assessment of knowledge about CATIE, while parametric and nonparametric statistical
tests were used to evaluate the degree of observed learning and the effect of lecture location on
the results.

Results: 3333 participants (mean
attendance: N = 278 per event) attended 1 of the 12
MGH-PA live symposia. Of the subsample of providers
who treat schizophrenia, 51% indicated that either
they had never heard of CATIE or they were not
familiar enough with its results to change their
practice. Overall, the proportion of correct answers
on the postactivity question was 65%, compared with 24% prior to the lecture
(chi2 = 48.68, df = 1, p < .001). Degree of learning did not
differ among symposium locations.

Conclusion: In this sample, the CATIE
study had very limited dissemination to, and impact
on, a geographically and occupationally diverse sample of mental health practitioners.
Robust learning of a key methodologic detail of this
trial was evidenced across symposium locations.